Houston Rodeo 2009

This past Monday, Diane and I went to the Houston Rodeo, the largest rodeo in the world. You heard me, in the whole world. Needless to say, it didn’t disappoint. We took the Metro Rail down so we’d avoid the long lines for parking. Jason and Erin introduced us to some delicious burritos and then we chowed down on typical rodeo food (e.g., corn on the cob and the chop potato). We convinced Erin to join us in some carnival games while Jason acted as the groups official photographer. We meandered through the livestock show (a lot of it was already inside the stadium by the time we entered the Reliant Center) before finally making it to the actual rodeo.

Probably my favorite part was when 20 teenage boys and girls were given the opportunity to catch some baby calves. If they successfully caught the calf and roped it, they were able to keep it. One poor boy held on for dear life as the calf dragged him all over the place. He ended up with a ripped shirts and torn jeans that were barely hanging out. Oh yeah, I can’t forget the mutton bustin’.

To top the night off, we saw Darius Rucker (remember Hooty and the Blowfish?) perform live. Best of all, we got great seats for a terrific price through the ExxonMobil Club. 🙂

Cowgirl in the making

Gotta love ’em Rednecks

The actual UT longhorn

You’re not from the country unless you’re riding a John Deere

I’d last about, ohhh, about 0.01 seconds on the bull

It sorta reminded me of Back to the Future 3

Delicious ice cream

I’m guessing a 3,000-calorie heart attack in the making

Will he hold on?

Still hanging on

It’s not looking so good…

The end is near

Off he went

That’ll teach him to ride a sheep

Darius Rucker (a little blurry, I know)

You can only zoom in so far at night (we were about 25 rows back on the field level)

BBQ Championships

Not sure what’s going on in 2009, but I guess we’ve been too lazy to blog about everything we do. It really has been a busy year and we blog on maybe 10% of the activities we do.

About two weeks ago, we headed over to the World’s Championship Bar-B-Que Contest that’s hosted here Houston. Before it became super huge, you were able to wander in and out of the various team tents, but now you have to have a special VIP ticket. We still meandered around the tents and it was kinda fun (better if we could have gone inside and eaten some super delicious BBQ).

We spent the evening with Carlos and his family, going on various carnival rides, eatings lots of carnival-like food (e.g., corn on the cob, bbq sandwiches, foot long corn dog, etc), and overall just having a good time.

One of the BBQ tents

One of the rides

Nothin’ like a Texas turkey leg